Page 34 of Legacy Ascended

“Nearly everything else. He remains a member of the faculty. You remain a student. You’re both on this campus, and people will talk. The Council may impose conditions I don’t control.” Falken looks from Jon to me. “I have removed his authority over you. Nobody should mistake that for permission.”

There’s the part I expected.

“Understood,” Jon says.

Falken stands and picks up the next folder on his desk. “Miss Nordlund, thank you for attending. Miss Miller, you’re twelve minutes late for History.”

Freya is through the door first, already writing something.

Jon and I end up alone in the dead space by the window where two corridors meet.

“When did you go to Falken?” I ask.

“After Bergström finished treating you.”

“That was the middle of the night.”

“I wasn’t sleeping.”

Neither was anyone else.

“Why now?”

Jon looks down the corridor, but there’s nobody close enough to hear us.

“Because while you were missing, I wasn’t looking for a student.” His eyes return to mine. “I was looking for you. I used every contact and every scrap of authority I had, and I would do it again. I can’t claim impartiality after that.”

I don’t know what to say. Unfortunately, Jon does.

“Are you going to be sensible about your shoulder?”

“You’re no longer allowed to have an opinion about my training.”

“I don’t. I have an opinion about whether you’ll be sensible, which is a separate subject and one I’m still permitted to discuss.”

“And?”

“You won’t be.”

I laugh, and pain catches in my shoulder. Jon takes my good elbow and holds it until the pain passes.

He’s standing closer than he used to. Close enough that I can see he missed a strip beside his jaw when he shaved and that his collar is crooked. I want to straighten it badly enough that I put my hand in my pocket.

“Go to class,” he says.

“That’s not your call anymore.”

“No,” Jon agrees. “It’s merely a suggestion.”

Conversation dies when I walk into Faris’s lecture hall. Forty people suddenly find their notes fascinating.

I have to walk the length of the room with Sophia on my right and Declan behind me carrying my bag.

Most people look at the sling. Natasha looks at my wrist.

She waits until I’m sitting. “Is that really a fourth mark?”

“Yes.”